Island of Misfits
by kerithwyn
Summary: They had won, there was no better feeling than that; and now they were to be sent away. Sent away to a place where people might be like themselves; a place where things would be different, and perhaps better. — House of Stairs, William Sleator [Gen, post-canon]


Fandom: House of Stairs

Summary: _They had won, there was no better feeling than that; and now they were to be sent away. Sent away to a place where people might be like themselves; a place where things would be different, and perhaps better._

— _House of Stairs_ , William Sleator

Notes: Written for Yuletide 2015 for Merriman. Thanks to Dorinda for handholding!

* * *

They never saw the others again.

Lola thought that was just as well. She and Peter had seen enough of what Blossom, Oliver, and Abigail turned into—

Or maybe, what had been revealed about their true natures while they'd all been trapped in the place of stairs. The other three were being sent for whatever "training" their new condition made them fit for. Lola couldn't imagine, and frankly didn't want to think about it.

She and Peter were being shipped off to "an island where misfits are kept." If that meant a place for people like them, people who didn't fit in...well, good.

Several weeks had passed since they were removed from the experiment. By now Lola and Peter had recovered physically; everything else was still under debate. They'd been through a long, grueling series of examinations meant to determine the mental and emotional results of the experiment, and maybe why they'd "failed." Lola merely stared disdainfully at the questioners. Peter said, when they met up for meals, that he'd spent the time looking out the window. "Not daydreaming," he said quickly to her concerned look. "Just...noticing things. Like reds and greens."

She smiled because she noticed things now, too. Being in that stark white place for so long—she'd missed a birthday in there, so now she was seventeen, and Peter's was coming up in a month—made them both appreciate the world so much more. So many colors! So many textures and sounds and smells! The hospital was in one of the safe air zones, so they could go outside and sit in the pale patchy grass under the stunted trees, and watch a flock of dark birds wheel overhead.

They didn't see Dr. Lawrence again after the tests ended. Lola overheard from one of the hospital attendants that he'd gone to talk to the President, to discuss the future of his experiment. Lola wished, viciously, that he'd be sent into his own creation to experience it firsthand.

"You know they won't let us leave the island," Peter said under the tree.

Lola hadn't thought that far ahead. He was right, but on the other hand...what did they have to look forward to otherwise? As wards of the state, they were given food and shelter and whatever education the government deemed necessary. When they turned eighteen, she and Peter would've been assigned to bunks in an overcrowded residential megastructure and sent to work in a factory making clothing or weapons or gas masks for the rest of their lives. Could exile be any worse?

* * *

They came for her at night.

Soldiers pulled her out of bed and the rough treatment warned her not to scream. Lola gritted her teeth, clinging to what Dr. Lawrence had said: that she and Peter were _both_ being sent away. They threw her clothes and ordered her to dress, and then she was blindfolded and taken outside and put inside a car, and then another car, and then she was led up narrow metal stairs.

She'd been listening the whole time for anything or anyone familiar, so intently that she missed her step and fell, scraping her knee. Despite Lola's determination not to give them the satisfaction of a sound, she cursed and was rewarded with an answering call.

"Lola?" Peter gasped behind her, and she cried "Here!" She was directed into a seat and strapped down with restraints like those on a car seat, and felt someone being subjected to the same treatment in the seat next to her. She reached out blindly and found Peter's flailing hand.

"Prepare for takeoff," a voice said into the air, and she held Peter's hand tight tight tight as they were pressed back in their seats. She didn't scream as the plane left the ground, but she bit her lip so hard she could taste blood and felt Peter's nails digging into her skin.

It was a long flight. At some point someone pulled the blindfolds off, and Lola blinked in the dimness as she looked around. She'd never been in a plane before, and she wasn't impressed. It was just a lot of seats crammed together on either side of a long aisle. There was a round window next to her, but the shade over it was sealed shut and all of the other windows were closed too. She and Peter were given food and led to the tiny bathroom, and otherwise ignored by the soldiers on board. They both dozed a little, lulled into sleep by boredom and the drone of the plane.

"Prepare for landing," the voice came again, and Lola and Peter reached to clutch at each others' hands without a word or a glance between them.

They were herded down the metal stairs onto a concrete pad. The plane's engines were still revving, which Lola took as a signal that the plane wasn't going to stick around. One of the guards pointed toward a metal gate at one end. "Better get going."

She and Peter were met at the gate by a tall dark-skinned woman with long braided hair. "I'm Camille," she said. "You're welcome here."

"Lola. This is Peter. Are you in charge?" Lola asked, a lot more belligerently than she'd meant to introduce herself.

Camille just smiled at her. "You're angry about other people's rules, aren't you. That's why we're here. That's why we're all here." She motioned for Lola and Peter to follow her, and they did.

As they walked along a dirt path, Camille told them about the people who lived here: teachers who refused to teach from redacted histories. Artists who created "dangerous" or "seditious" work. Librarians who hid banned books. Scientists who spoke truths the administration didn't want to hear. Soldiers and police officers who refused to turn their weapons on civilians they were supposed to protect. And anyone else who disagreed with the administration and didn't stay quiet about it.

Lola spotted a number of women and some older men as they walked. The war, she knew, had killed several generations of men and a lot of women too, people like her parents and Peter's father. She and Peter were younger than everyone else on the island.

"Dropping us here saves space in the prisons. The powers that be expected us to kill each other, ungovernable criminals that we are," Camille added, almost offhandedly. "We've refused to indulge them."

They'd reached the edge of what seemed to be a small village. Short round buildings of all sizes covered a patch of cleared ground. "We're short on space, so we're doubling up on sleeping arrangements. I'm sure you're used to a bit of crowding."

"Doubling up" meant two people to a tiny hut, which was still more room than Lola had back at the orphanage. "Lola, you'll be staying with Sophie. Peter, you're with Lucas. They're on their work details right now, but you'll meet them at dinner. Everyone eats together. That is," Camille said with a glance toward Lola, "one of our few rules."

She told them about the other rules as she showed them the rest of the village: the crafting and storage areas, the kitchen and cafeteria, the long farms stretching out past the buildings. "Everyone works. Everyone cooperates to make this place better and more livable. Everyone respects each others' boundaries, both physical and emotional. That means," she said to their confused looks, "that you don't touch other people without permission or ask them personal questions. Whatever you were or did before you were sent here, that doesn't matter anymore. And violence against anyone else is not tolerated."

"That's good," Peter said, to Lola's surprise. He'd been so quiet since they arrived, taking everything in and letting Lola do the talking. She'd gotten used to that, and made a decision right then to stop. "I— I can work. I mean, if someone tells me what to do."

Camille smiled at him gently. "For right now, all you need to do is collect a change of clothes out of storage and wash the dust of the old world off you."

"And then?" Lola asked, trying hard to keep from making every word a challenge.

"And then dinner, and meeting the others. There's plenty of time to find you both a job tomorrow. And Lola, to answer your question, I'm not in charge. No one is. We've organized in what used to be called a commune, or a common community. Everyone has a voice here."

And then Peter said something Lola never thought he'd say, something she'd wondered but never dreamed of asking. "Why didn't they just kill us? All— all of us?"

Camille stopped walking. She wasn't smiling any more, Lola realized, and she looked a lot older than she'd seemed at first. "That's a good question, Peter. We can talk about that later. All of us understand how disorienting this must be for you, and how much you don't know. That's not your fault," she said to Lola's immediate glare, "that's the fault of a government that only told you want it wanted you to hear. We'll be happy to share the truths we know, and then it'll be up to you to decide what you believe."

Lola had never heard anyone say something like that before. Over the next few days, she found that happening a lot.

Life on the island wasn't easy. The shipments of synthetic protein air-dropped onto the island weren't actually enough to sustain all the inhabitants. So they farmed their own food—who knew that potatoes came out of the ground, or that you could eat certain kinds of mushrooms? There was no meat, of course. Lola didn't miss it.

The island had once been a research center. The buildings hadn't been made to last, so the inhabitants were constantly patching holes and bolstering the foundations to keep them from sinking. Giant storms passed over the island on a regular basis, so keeping the structures and farm plots protected was everyone's first job.

Lola didn't mind. She discovered she was good at working with her hands, really getting into the dirt to nurture the crops. She felt _useful_ in a way she never had, and no one gave her nasty looks for not fitting in. No one here really fit in, that was the point.

Peter found a place, too. There was a sort of electric "fence" that kept the worst of the pollution out of the air, and it required constant monitoring. It was dull work, or at least Lola would have found it dull, but Peter didn't mind. He said it gave him time to think.

Lola wasn't sure all that thinking was good for him either, but at least she never saw him go into his trances again when she was with him.

* * *

She still dreamed of stairs.

Lola was back on the white-on-white stairs and landings, except now she knew the score. She understood the goal of the experiment and this time, she was determined to win.

She was more vicious than Blossom at her most manipulative, more demanding than Oliver at his most hateful. She bent Abigail and Peter to her whims and the machine (and the watchers behind the screens) loved her every cruelty. And when Peter finally rebelled and refused to obey, she bullied him backward on the machine's landing, one deliberate step at a time, until his foot slipped off the edge—

She didn't wake screaming. But every time the dream came she bit her lip so hard it bled, and her short nails had created permanent half-moon scars in her palms.

Only a dream, she reminded herself. She'd been the first to understand what the machine wanted, and rejected it. She'd nearly let herself starve rather than submit.

Until the very end, when she'd tried to go crawling back. But that was done now, it was over. If nothing else, Lola could be thankful for the fact that there were no stairs here.

* * *

Lola was telling the story about her car crash one night after dinner, over a communal fire. No one would ask, but people were free to volunteer stories since that was the primary form of entertainment here. The listeners kept glancing between themselves until she finally broke off. "What?"

"Lola," said one of the older men, she thought his name was John, "your crash wasn't an accident."

She stared at him. "Sure it was. I couldn't see anything with the smog, and the curve in the road—"

He smiled, kind but sad. "With all the automated systems and guidance controls, the car would've compensated for the road. Unless someone at the monitoring station turned them off. There aren't any accidents anymore, not like that."

"But," she started, and then Peter let out a low choked cry and got up from where he'd been sitting next to her, fleeing out of the light toward his hut. She stared after him, puzzled, until she remembered that his mother had died in a car crash. And Blossom's parents, too.

Her first impulse was to go after Peter, but she needed to understand what they were saying. "They tried to kill me?"

Maybe-John shrugged. "Or wanted to see if you would survive. You said you ran from the group home by stealing a teacher's car. All those cars are full of monitors, the police would have known immediately."

She sat, stunned, trying to process. Maybe...maybe that was why she'd been chosen for the experiment. Not the snake in the matron's room or any of the other stunts she'd pulled, or maybe they'd already had their eyes on her and the fact that she'd lived sealed the deal. So they'd sent a cop to pick her up instead of letting her die, choking in the dirty air. She'd proven her determination to live through anything.

They hadn't been wrong.

Lola stood on shaky legs. "I— I'm gonna go see about my friend."

She thought about what he'd said on the way to Peter's hut. Her crash, okay, sure, she'd stolen a car and run away. Blossom's parents—well, Blossom claimed her father worked high up in the administration, maybe he'd seen or said the wrong thing. But what could Peter's mother have done?

Peter's roommate Lucas was sitting outside, obviously having chosen to give Peter the space. "He's pretty upset," Lucas said, but he didn't ask her why. That would've been too close to prying into personal business.

She went inside. Peter was huddled on his pallet, arms around his knees. "She didn't do anything!" he cried.

There was nothing she could say so she didn't, instead sitting next to him and putting her arm around his bony shoulders.

* * *

It didn't take very long for both of them to recognize how naïve they'd both been about certain truths—Peter more than her, but still. Here on the island, men and women worked and lived together and some of them were more than just friends. No one cared. No one cared about the men or women who preferred their own gender, either.

Lola was still figuring out how she felt about all that but Peter, for once, was far ahead of her. He'd been staring at two men holding hands at the campfire. Just when Lola was about to nudge him he laughed, suddenly and with what sounded to Lola like relief. "I wasn't wrong."

She blinked at him. "About what?"

"About Jasper," he said, sounding amazed. "About how I felt about him. About how I wanted him to love me."

 _Oh._ She blushed, she couldn't help it, but managed not to look away. "I'm sorry they took you away from him, Peter."

"That was a long time ago," he said, and Lola understood he meant more than just years.

* * *

"Diane will be leaving us," Roberta said another night. "She's asked for privacy tonight. You can say your goodbyes in the morning."

By now, Lola knew enough to keep her mouth shut until she could ask someone privately. She found Camille after the evening fire. She could've asked Sophie, but Sophie rarely spoke, and Lola didn't want to irritate the person she was sleeping next to. "What did that mean, Diane is leaving? Leaving where?"

"She's going into the jungle." Camille's voice and gaze were level. "It's her decision."

There were no rules about going into the jungle, just warnings. About the poisonous snakes and scorpions and spiders, and the quicksand, and lack of protection from the weather. So that meant...

"She's going out to _die_?"

"It's her decision," Camille repeated flatly, and turned away.

She went to talk to Peter about it, because at least Peter would listen, even if he didn't have any answers. "...don't understand," Lola said. "It's okay here, why would she choose to die?"

"We did," Peter said, and the difference between his truth and her lie hit her so hard that it took Lola a moment to remember how to breathe.

She'd given in at the end of the experiment, finally willing to do whatever it took to survive, even if no one knew it but Peter. And Peter...

Unlike her he _would_ have let himself starve rather than become something horrible. He'd never told her that, wanting to let her believe that he'd given in too so she wouldn't have to face her shame alone. And she could never let him know how much she needed his silence to keep from hating herself. Peter—disconnected, dreaming Peter—had been the strongest of the five of them after all.

Lola shuddered and this time, Peter reached out to her. She went to hug him gladly, no longer surprised that his steady determination could offer her comfort. He was still quiet and withdrawn, but he didn't flinch away from other people any more or try to hide from the world by turning inward.

And she guessed she understood Diane's decision, after all. There was no escaping this island. Choosing not to endure it might be the only freedom any of them had left.

* * *

Caleb was screaming.

Some nights he just went off, shrieking into the air, cursing and shouting in words that Lola, for all her willingness to use strong language, wouldn't have dreamed of using. He was yelling at "them," cursing them for leaving him on the island.

"I wish he'd stop," Lola grumbled, trying to wrap her thin pillow around her ears. It didn't help. She sat up on her pallet and glared toward the door. "What use is that, anyway? It's not like anyone can hear him but us."

"Yes they can," Sophie said, startling Lola. Her roommate rarely spoke and Lola had to strain to make sure she heard right.

"What do you mean?"

"Cameras everywhere. Always watching. Always listening." That exhausted Sophie's store of words and she turned to the wall.

Lola stared at her back. She hadn't seen...no one had said...but oh, goddammit, that made too much sense. Of course someone would be watching the "misfits," how could she have she thought otherwise? Video screens watched everyone everywhere, back in the world. She hadn't seen the screens in the experiment place but they'd recorded every moment of her suffering. Why had she thought there wouldn't be any here?

She hadn't thought. Not at all. She'd taken this place for granted, imagining that she and the others were really on their own. But they were still in a cage, still in a prison, still being treated like lab rats—

Sophie got up and stalked outside and Lola realized she'd been grinding her teeth loud enough to be overheard. She wanted to get up and tell Peter but there was no use. His knowing wouldn't change anything and just make him upset.

Part of her wanted to go outside and scream with Caleb. The rest didn't want to give Them the satisfaction.

By morning, she'd already repented her decision not to tell Peter. But first she wanted to understand.

"I know about the hidden screens," Lola told Camille. "What's the point of that?"

Camille sighed. "When a government puts its resources into controlling and monitoring its people, that becomes the way of life. Even here."

Lola frowned. "But it's not like we can _do_ anything. It doesn't matter what we say. Why should they care?"

"Because watching us—the rebels, the misfits—gives them clues about what to look for in others. We're the perfect control group because they couldn't control us. Whatever you did to be sent here," Camille spoke quickly, so Lola wouldn't mistake her words for a question, "that's valuable data toward refining the way they handle potential problems." She smiled bitterly. "Now you understand the point of the rules. We're behaving with each other, you see? Getting along in a way that couldn't be compelled, when they expected us all to fight."

Lola did see, even if she couldn't put it in words to explain.

* * *

It was hard to pretend she didn't know about the screens. Some days Lola just wanted to yell like Caleb, to scream at them to stop watching. Or worse, to break all the rules and really give them a show. But the last thing she wanted to do was prove the watchers right. The people here were better than that, they'd refused to fall in line as mindless followers of an evil government. Lola wasn't going to betray them just to blow off steam. The reward mattered, she reminded herself: Dr. Lawrence would never have understood the intangible reward of this community where she and Peter had found a home.

And then, just like that, the food drops stopped.

Mike kept a precise tally of days, marking off each supply drop and whenever someone new arrived. So when the expected day passed, and then the next two with no sign of a plane, everyone understood that the nature of their life on the island was about to change. Some thought they were being punished. Some wondered if there was another war, and no one had time to think about the island...or it'd been forgotten, maybe on purpose.

There was, unsurprisingly, a lot of anger at the campfire. A lot of fear. Some of the others were panicking. Camille was trying to keep them calm, reminding them they had their own resources. But the one thing they could count on here had been taken away, and they were terrified. Lola understood how they felt. Except...the food wasn't the only thing that bound them together.

She listened with increasing dismay until Peter touched her shoulder. "Go on. Tell them."

Lola stood up and cleared her throat. "We have to stick together. We can't turn on each other."

Mike turned to glare at her. "What would you know about it?"

Lola took a deep breath. "I know a lot about it. Before we came here, Peter and I... The administration used us for an experiment, because we're orphans. Us and three others. They put us in a place..." She looked out over the faces, people she'd just started to know. "They tried to make us hate each other. Hurt each other. And they used food to do it. So yeah, we know what it's like to go hungry, maybe even starve. But that's better than..." she trailed off, searching for the words.

"That's better than turning into monsters," Peter said.

Everyone else was staring at them, and especially at Peter, who rarely spoke so openly. Most of them looked doubtful, some angry, some confused. She didn't expect them to believe her now, maybe not until the food stores started getting low.

Dying wasn't the worst thing that could happen. She could help them understand that, for as long as they lived.


End file.
